An early-morning fire in Bushwick yesterday left a man and a woman in critical condition and cost the lives of four dogs, but it could have been worse had it not been for the fast-acting FDNY. The fire in a wood frame home on Bleecker Street was discovered by neighbors just after 3 a.m., at which point it had spread from an unoccupied ground floor unit to the second floor, where two boys were leaning out the window with their dogs to escape smoke inhalation. "I was saying jump, jump,” neighbor Eddie Clay tells the Times. “But instead of jumping, they threw the dogs."
The dogs, Precious and Lady, survived the fall. Clay's wife ran to a red fire alarm box on Myrtle Avenue, but it didn't work (surprise, surprise), so she ran to the nearby police station. Meanwhile, a 911 call brought the FDNY to the scene within three minutes after the call was placed. The boys were rescued via ladders by firefighters from Ladder Company 112; meanwhile, other firefighters from Ladder Company 124 crawled into the second floor unit, which was engulfed with flames.
Thick, black smoke filled the building from floor to ceiling. "You couldn't see your hand in front of your face," Lieutenant Mike Lampasso later told NY1. According to the FDNY's statement, "the team began their search and found an unconscious woman, who was in respiratory arrest. The firefighters carried her downstairs to safety, where Firefighter Paul Sulzinski began CPR. Lt. Lampasso then found a man, who was in cardiac arrest, in the doorway of the back bedroom. The group then carried him to safety." Unfortunately, they were unable to save four dogs who died in the home. The rescued humans, Yolanda Nieves, 68, and stepuncle Jerry Nieves, 40, are both listed in critical but stable condition. After Yolanda Nieves was taken out, Clay told the Daily News, "She wasn't moving. I didn't see no vital signs."
The FDNY says the fire was accidental and started due to an electrical problem in the unoccupied downstairs unit, which Nieves was renovating for her son, Elvis, his companion, Genesis, and her children. The two boys rescued from the second floor were Genesis's sons; they were also hospitalized Monday with smoke inhalation. According to the FDNY, there were smoke alarms in the house, but they didn't have batteries. Speaking this time to the NY Post, the ubiquitous neighbor Clay explained, "They just redid the floors. With all that shellac, it just went up."
